Acupuncture in Medicine Highlights

In this issue

White, A. — 2012-02-28T22:11:24-08:00

Five of our articles find different ways of ‘touching a nerve’.

Nerve conduction velocity was the objective way that by Schroeder et al measured the effect of acupuncture on patients with peripheral neuropathy due to chemotherapy. The results look exciting, though readers will be cautious about drawing conclusions since the control patients were self-selected (unable to get to clinics for treatment) and were less severely affected, leaving less scope for change. That said, the cumulative evidence now published suggests that it is time for a rigorous sham-controlled study.

Some readers may share the Editor's ignorance of the word ‘mitempfindung’. It is the phenomenon where touching a nerve at one site produces the sensation of itch at a remote site. Silberstein noted in himself, went on to explore it systematically, and combined his findings with some previously published reports. All this careful work suggests that mitempfindung could be the origin...

In this issue

White, A. — 2011-11-23T04:52:00-08:00

The journal's mission is to use science to re-evaluate tradition in understanding acupuncture. But it is sometimes difficult to free oneself from the concepts of traditional Chinese acupuncture. It is a bit like traditional sticky toffee, stuck between the teeth. There are five pieces of sticky toffee in this issue, and varying degrees of success at dealing with them.

The most obvious, and persistent, tradition of acupuncture is the idea of ‘correct’ acupuncture points for a particular condition. In a nicely performed RCT, Kim and colleagues used a consensus of ‘correct’ points for treating hot flushes and compared them with what they assumed were ‘incorrect’ points. In line with much of the evidence from other trials, they found no difference: hot flushes declined in both groups. Acupuncture's effect in this condition is a general effect on central nervous system mechanisms – by some (still unknown) combination of sensory nerve...

In this issue

White, A. — 2011-08-29T05:52:51-07:00

When cooks make a pudding, they adds eggs to the other ingredients to make it richer and more tasty. But the balance has to be right: over-egging the pudding just spoils it. In the same way, the appeal of any scientific paper depends on having the right balance of all its ingredients – methods, data, conclusions and presentation in the journal. The editor is responsible for striking this balance, and when the balance is wrong the taste is ruined. Recently, an acupuncture paper with rather modest results was splashed on the journal cover and over-egged by a linked editorial, leading to some adverse publicity. The truth is that knowledge about acupuncture progresses rather incrementally, and true breakthroughs (eggs) are rare. It is our hope that we can be part of that careful, incremental progress, with just the right mix of ingredients.

It does seem that we are beginning to...

In this issue

White, A. — 2011-05-26T10:05:28-07:00

We feature two major controversies in acupuncture: whether some acupuncture points should be ‘forbidden’ in pregnancy, and whether special precautions are needed in using electroacupuncture (EA).

The pregnancy debate is contentious, and attracts three articles, nicely illustrating a common dilemma of the modern acupuncturist. There is no shortage of traditions handed down from the ancient physicians, as discussed by Betts and Budd; some of these should be respected because they are based on close clinical observation – but which ones? We are revisionists, reinterpreting the mechanisms of acupuncture from our knowledge of human physiology, but Da Silva and colleagues have been vilified for doing this publicly: they argue that the concept of Yin/Yang expresses the principle that acupuncture ‘normalises’ the body's physiology and patients should not be denied useful therapy. The third approach is to appraise the evidence, which Cummings does: acupuncture might have some influence on uterine activity...

In this issue

White, A. — 2011-03-07T16:07:12-08:00

Papers published in medical journals are supposed to be useful by having ‘implications’. At the end of any decently written Discussion section, you should find paragraphs on the study's ‘implications for practice’ and on its ‘implications for research’. But what becomes of these implications? In reality, clinicians find it difficult to change their practice, and researchers' main conclusion (so the joke goes) is that more research should be done, preferably by themselves. So let us consider whether there are any implications of the various items in this issue, for clinicians and for researchers.

Our Image of acupuncture shows the resolution of a keloid scar with acupuncture needles. As clinicians, it would be easy to introduce this treatment, but will the researcher in each of us demand a control for the natural history of the condition?

In our first of our eight (yes, eight!) original papers, Liodden and colleagues were...